Perched on a bluff top overlooking the Wisconsin River, the Duey Wright House is one of Frank Lloyd Wright's last Usonian residences.
Built for Duey and Julia Wright (not related to the architect) who owned a local music store and music school, the home's unusual L-shaped footprint has been suggested to represent a quarter note in honor of the musical couple. Moreover, a repeated geometric design found throughout the home in perforated plywood panels suggests musical notation. Wright used these panels in the exterior windows and as screens between rooms.
The unadorned concrete block walls combine with the wide overhanging eaves to create a low horizontal look to the home.
The longest wing, which runs east to west, is principally used for bedrooms, with the carport on the east end and the library on the west end. The two wings are joined on the west end by a large concrete block chimney, which allows for a library fireplace, and another in the living room. The circular living room contains a continuous band of windows allowing for a panoramic view of the Wisconsin River to the southwest, and Rib Mountain in the distance.
Wright was born June 8, 1867, in Richland Center, Wisconsin.
His father, William Carey Wright, a musician and minister, and his mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones, a teacher, had originally named him Frank Lincoln Wright, but the name was later changed when they divorced. As a child, Wright's mother had given him the Froebel gifts, a set of educational toys developed by Friedrich Froebel that included wood blocks and paper for construction that Wright later credited as having a fundamental influence on his sense of structure and rhythmic design.
When he was 12, Wright's family settled in Madison where he attended high school.
He spent summers on his Uncle James Lloyd-Jones' farm near Spring Green, on land that would eventually become the site of his home, Taliesin. In 1885 Wright left high school to work for Allan Conover, Dean of the University of Wisconsin's Engineering Department. Wright spent two semesters studying civil engineering before moving to Chicago in 1887.
In 1909, after 18 years in Oak Park, Wright left his home and family, moving to Germany with a woman named Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of a former client.
When they returned in 1911, Wright and Borthwick moved to the land once owned by his aunts and uncles in Spring Green, where he built their home, Taliesen. Taliesin is a Welsh word meaning "shining brow," and Wright described the building as wrapping around the brow of the hill. Wright and Borthwick lived in the home until 1914 when a crazed servant set fire to the residential wing, killing Borthwick and six others. After burying Borthwick at Unity Chapel, Wright announced that he would rebuild his home, which he now referred to as Taliesin II.